The Music of Chance – Paul Auster

It is the story of a man, his stand to life, his approach to his family, his point of view about the happenings and his patience with the series of events that he is exposed to…

Nasha looks like a lonely man being left by his wife and leaving his only daughter to his sister to be taken care of. He works as a fireman till he finds out that he is inherited some fortune as a result of his father’s death, whom he has never known about. After this relatively lucky event (according to him), he spares some of the money for his daughter’s future and the rest for the feeling of freedom to be led by himself…

He quits his job soon afterwards and hits himself on the roads, new and strange and feeling his car as his home more and more day by day unchaining himself at the same time from a routine-based settled life cycle…

This is when he meets Pozzi and the really interesting part of the book takes a start. Although Pozzi looks just like a child to him by his appearance, he soon finds out that he is an assertive card player. At this point their roads (fates) intersect on the same ambition in order for Pozzi to earn more money and for Nasha to maintain lately gained freedom he has been drenched in so far…

After a card game they participiate (Pozzi as the player and Nasha as the investor), as they consume all the money at the end and as they still owe some amount, they are hired by the other rich players as the constructers (to construct a WALL), which constitutes the main part of the book. After this point Nasha loses his control over the events, the people, the environment, his life and himself…

This was the first book i read by Paul Auster and was not my own choice but the Book Club’s. It was a translation book (I read it in Turkish) and although subject matter is a bit different, I enjoyed the book.

I have been meaning to ask you how the book club was coming along Choti! How do you choose the books? Is it a voting system? I haven’t read anything by Paul Auster but I know quite a few readers who are huge fans of his writing.

For two months it was going quite well…our choosing system is just random…i mean every reader chooses a book from her own home-library for the other reader and each reader reads a different book and at the end of the month shortly summarizes both the topic and her feelings about the book…quite a personally systematized way….

However we are now quite decreased in number so it seems the book club is about to dissolve 😦